TRUMP AND THE PEACE PRIZE
- Paul Hansbury
- Sep 10
- 5 min read
It has become a dictum: Donald Trump craves the Nobel Peace Prize. The US president has, of course, fuelled such speculations by repeatedly boasting that he is a peacemaker. In February he said: 'I deserve it [the Nobel Peace Prize] but they will never give it to me.' His cabinet members and allies publicly insist he should be given the prize. Steve Witkoff, adopting Trumpian hyperbole, told Trump on 26 August: 'You are the single finest candidate since this award was ever talked about.' It is nauseating to watch such flannel.
In support of his peacemaker credentials, Trump asserts that he has solved several wars. On 18 August, the day he met Ukraine's Volodomyr Zelenskyy at the White House, he said: 'I've ended six wars... all of these [are] deals I made.' The following day he told reporters he had solved seven wars. Resisting suggestions the president was careless about the facts, the White House provided a list. It included conflicts between Egypt and Ethiopia, and between Serbia and Kosovo, supposedly ended during his first term. Whilst they are in principle relevant to assessing his suitability for the prize, I do not address them here because neither were wars by any usual definition.
Trump, particularly bitter that the Nobel Committee awarded Barack Obama with the peace prize in 2009, returned to office promising to settle to war in Ukraine 'in 24 hours'. He may have failed in that one, but what about the other five wars he claims to have ended since his return to the presidency?
The balance sheet
If Trump has indeed ended five wars in the space of eight months, he deserves plaudits all round. But it is a mighty big 'if'. The list includes a decades-long war in Congo. In June, after pro-Rwandan rebels seized more territory, Trump invited the Rwandan and Congolese leaders to Washington DC to sign a ceasefire agreement. Last month the M23 rebels, however, said they will no longer adhere to that ceasefire. Even before that announcement, they continued to mount large attacks targeting citizens in Congo according to media reports. The challenge of a ceasefire between Rwanda and Congo is that rebel groups such as M23 have their own agency, meaning it is far too soon to conclude that the conflict is over.
